he centerpiece section of
Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit is both the reason to see the film, and the reason
why some viewers won’t want to. It probably lasts for about half the film’s 2
hour and 25 minute runtime, after a section that sets up what led there, and
before a section about the aftermath, and is the type of filmmaking Bigelow
does best – tense, edge of your seat filmmaking, that puts the audience there,
right alongside its characters and makes them sit in their discomfort. It’s a sequence
that viewers will want to stop – it’s hard to sit through, hard to shake, and
yet we are powerless to stop. This, of course, is the point of this sequence –
as many of the characters in this sequence are either powerless to stop it
themselves, or at least think they are, because they don’t. I completely and
totally understand the reaction of some critics – many of whom are black – who
think Bigelow is just exploiting black pain for her movie and really do not
want to sit through more scenes of black people being tormented by police
officers. They have argued that the film isn’t for them – and they may well be
right. Maybe the film is for white people – the kind of white people we see in
Jordan Peele’s brilliant Get Out, who think one think and get comforted with
the reality. Perhaps that’s why in so much of the movie outside this tense
middle section of the film, so much of the dialogue is awkward and stilted, and
feels like screenwriter Mark Boal and Bigelow are trying – way too hard – to draw
direct parallels to the racial tension in America today, and how little really
has changed in the 50 years since the events depicted in Detroit took place.

That centerpiece sequence takes
place at the Algiers Motel in Detroit, in the summer of 1967, in the middle of
Detroit Riots or Detroit Rebellion (depending on the language you choose to
use). This was far from the first racially motivate riots that broke out in
America in the 1960s. The films opens with what kicked off the unrest –
basically the straw that broke the camel’s back – when cops raided an unlicensed
after hours drinking club in the black part of town. Those not arrested, got
pissed, and tensions boiled over – and riots broke out. A few days into those
riots, the National Guard has been called in. A group at the Algiers motel –
mostly black, but with two white girls – are hanging out in the Annex of the
motel – and one of them thinks it will be funny to fire off his starts pistol
in the direction of the amassing National Guard and police officers. They come
to the motel, and want answers – and are willing to do anything to get them. It
has already been established that their leader – Krauss (Will Poulter) is a
violent, racist – we see him shoot an unarmed black man in the back for
stealing groceries, and then having the audacity of running away (he’s
basically given a warning, and sent back to work). He kills one of the men
right away – and lines the rest up against the wall. Through the hours and
hours that follow, he and his cohorts will “play a game” with the rest of them
to get answers. One by one, they take the rest of them into another room, and “pretend”
to shoot them, to get the rest to talk. Until one of them doesn’t pretend
anymore. Killing one of them – as they were running away – may be okay, but
two? By the end of the night, another black man will be dead as well.

This centerpiece section is brilliantly
directed by Bigelow, and does a great job of establishing the various
characters through their actions. Krauss is the leader – the man who can bully
the rest of the cops to go along with him, speaking in “coded” language about “them”
and about how they are likely are guilty of “something”. His two fellow officers
Demens (Jack Reynor) and Flynn (Ben O’Toole) – are not as overtly racist or
sadistic as Krauss – but they go right along with everything. There’s also a
National Guardsman there, who plays along up to a point, and then leaves. And
there is also Dismukes (John Boyega) – a black security guard who tags along,
in the hopes of keeping things under control, although he is clearly unable to
do so. The black men tortured by the cops include a Vietnam war vet (Anthony
Mackie) who is smart and disciplined enough to realize fighting back will get
him nowhere, two members of a musical group – Larry and Fred (Algee Smith and Jacob
Latimore) who were just trying to lay low until the heat died down of the
riots, and got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s also Carl
(Jason Mitchell) – who earlier breaks down the fear black people experience
that white people do not understand. The two white girls who are there (Hannah
Murray and Kaitlyn Dever) – set off the cops as much as the black men do,
simply for being with them. The cops immediately assume they must be
prostitutes, and want to know why they sleep with blacks, but not “nice” white
guys like them. The sequence is brutally intense and unrelenting. You sit and
watch, and want to step in, want it to end, and it just keeps going. Like her
previous two films – The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty (also written by
Boal) – Bigelow wants her audience on edge the whole time, constantly on the
brink of going over.

Everything that surrounds this
brilliantly, brutally effective sequence is not nearly as effective. Part of
that is just the inevitable boring parts of having to set everything up – this is
a big movie, with a lot of cast members, and movie parts, and requires a
certain degree of exposition to place it in context (the opening, with
intertitles over paintings is more effective than the other earlier scenes).
But much of it seems to Boal and Bigelow trying to draw parallels to then and
today – using language that would sound awkward now, but even stranger in the
context of 1967 – the movie almost goes out of its way to make sure you know that
not all cops are racist, but tries (less successfully) to paint them as part of
a larger system of institutional racism, that allows and excuses their
behavior.

A film like Detroit is clearly
meant to make its audience uneasy – which it does, and at times brilliantly so.
At other times though, it makes them uneasy in another way – because it is
trying so hard to draw connections to today, and trying so hard to be both fair
to everyone, and yet not excuse any of them either. This has been Bigelow and
Boal’s approach in their last three films – and honestly, it worked better in
The Hurt Locker and (especially) Zero Dark Thirty than it does in Detroit. I
think they are trying to sidestep the traps in films like this – films that
document historical traumas that allow audiences to feel comfortable, because
as horrible as they are, they can be relegated to the past. Bigelow and Boal
try very hard to make sure you do not forget that these cannot be so easily
relegated. They aren’t entirely successful – but I admire the effort.

About Me

I am an accountant, living in Brantford, ON - and although I am married and have beautiful daughter, I still find time to watch a lot of movies. This blog is mostly reviews of new movies - with other musing thrown in as well.